Nine-year-old Angelina Tores wants to be a veterinarian when she grows up. Angelina, a fourth grader from Camden, shares this dream in the midst of the busy basement of Immanuel Orthodox Presbyterian Church in West Collingswood. She’s one of 32 children who are part of Kids Alley, an after-school learning center and outreach organization for youth in Camden that’s fighting against severe economic depression, rampant violence and open-air drug markets to give kids like Angelina a fighting chance.

A safe refuge

At simple folding tables that pack the room, tutors are going over math worksheets and reading assignments with kids from first grade to sixth. Some are perfecting their spelling. A group of four kids, about seven or eight years old, play with puzzles on one side of the room. Playdough masterpieces are crafted on the other.

The whole show is run by Director Vivian Tan, who works hours upon hours, seven days a week with the kids to make sure dreams like Angelina’s can come to life.

Kids Alley doesn’t have a building of its own to call home yet, so the children who fill every corner of the church’s rooms are driven there from their homes in Camden. The after-school program is focused on building the students academically and socially, providing nutritional snacks, access to technology and more. It started as a Saturday outreach program 14 years ago, when Tan started holding high-energy, interactive events for children in the poorest areas of Camden. There were hot dogs and puppet shows and the program grew and grew.

Now, the Saturday program has evolved, but is still thriving with 80-100 kids attending every weekend. On Sunday mornings, Tan holds a Kids Alley Family Church.

Kids Alley is a full time job for her, and it’s one she sees as more than important, more than necessary. It’s crucial.

“The children come from very hardworking families, their parents may be working two jobs or working late hours. This is a way to get them off of the streets and have a safe refuge,” Tan said.

And while the learning center is a bustling haven for the kids, it’s the constant threats outside their protective walls that proves to be a constant challenge.

They’re reminded of the reality of life in a city that has seen more than three dozen homicides this year alone — well on it’s way to beating last year’s total of 49 — all too often.

When Learning Center Site Coordinator Annie Powles was walking with one young girl in the program in a local park, out of nowhere, the girl asked Powles if she knew what happened.

“She said ‘Did you know my daddy got shot in the heart and died?’” Powles recalled. She had known, but hadn’t yet heard the girl open up about the loss.

“We talked about how sad that must have been, and I asked if she talks about her dad at home, if she had any photos of him,” Powles said, and the girl said she did.

“It’s those things that get you. It’s so hard. This is her world, this is what she carries with her every day.”

With Tan, the ever-present dangers the children face hit hard lately. Very hard.

Camden resident Osvaldo Rivera, 31, is facing charges of slitting the throats of a six-year-old boy and 12-year-old girl, siblings, on Sept. 3. Rivera is also suspected of sexually assaulting the girl, who survived the attack. The six-year-old boy did not. Tan knew the boy, a regular at the Kids Alley program on Saturdays. He recently collected so many of certain special tickets, that they get for memorizing verses or completing tasks, he won lunch with Tan. It’s a big prize for the kids who look to her for encouragement, love and support.

“I remember, he sat at the table, so ready to give thanks,” Tan recalled, adding after she heard the news of his death, she kept seeing his face, over and over again.

For a program that reaches out to one of the most dangerous, poorest cities in the country, such tragedy seems frustratingly inevitable. But with each moment of regret and despair, she somehow finds a reason to give thanks.

“Part of me gets angry because it’s so senseless,” Tan said. “But part of me is grateful I had the chance to be with him and be a part of his life.”

After the boy’s murder, Tan said she finds herself hugging the kids a bit tighter, and holding on for a little longer.

The only thing for her to do is keep working, she said, keep finding more kids to reach out to and welcome into their safe haven.

Throughout the years, it has bounced from facility to facility in the Camden area without a permanent home. The space at the Immanuel Orthodox Presbyterian church is in a great neighborhood they said, but with tutors and kids busy at work in every room, including the kitchen, they need space to grow and adapt.

Kids Alley is working toward raising more funds, and hopefully will find a permanent home for itself. On Oct. 6, a “Walk for Hope” will be held at Washington Lake Park in Washington Township to benefit the program. They want to show the families and children of Camden that there is a “glimpse of hope.”

Two Different Worlds

All of the time Tan or Powles is talking about the goals of Kids Alley in the Learning Center, they’re interrupted every few minutes by the grinning and eager children around them, buzzing from room to room. One seven-year-old girl finished her math homework, and wanted to know if she could go on the computer. Another was eager to show Tan a twisting, colorful Playdough sculpture she created.

“You are so talented! I have to learn how to do that,” Tan told her before she ran to show her creation off to another staff member.

She said positive affirmation is “so important” for the kids. At Kids Alley, she said, the kids learn in a safe environment, where they are encouraged to be kind and thoughtful. There’s even a “Kindness Board” on the wall, which fills up with colorful Post-Its the children write about the nice things they’ve done or have seen every day.

“I helped clean up,” said one in large, jagged letters

“Olivia read to me,” another reads.

Even just asking a fellow students how they’re doing counts.

“I said ‘Jose are you OK?” one Post-It documented.

It’s about respect, Tan said.

“They don’t get yelled at here, they’re spoken to and respected like human beings.”

The students have also formed a special bond recently with young tutors who come in from local parochial schools, as well as Haddonfield public schools. On Thursday afternoon, students from Christ the King Regional School in Haddonfield came by, as they do every week. Some read books to students, while others decoded fifth-grade math problems. Others simply shared stories about his brothers and sisters.

It’s a bond that bridges two very different worlds.

Just a week ago, Camden took the disheartening title of the most impoverished city in the nation.

That means the Kids Alley children are living in a city where the average residential home is assessed at about $55,000. In Haddonfield, where many of the student tutors live and go to school, that figure is nearly nine times that, at $491,359.

“These places in Camden are five miles from my front door,” said Powles, a Haddonfield resident. “But our lives are so completely different.”

By putting the kids together, and mixing their vastly differing experience, Powles said the Kids Alley children teach just as much as they are taught.

“They click,” Powles said. “They open one another up to different worlds.”

‘In each of these children is a dream’

While Kids Alley is faith-based and shares the word of Jesus and the Bible to the children, there is no one denomination or faith that pervades every leader of the program. Powles is Catholic, Tan is Protestant, their art teacher is Hindu. To them, it’s about giving the children a strong foundation of faith and guidance when they need it the most.

“We just all talk and share,” Powles said. “In the darkness of night, that’s what they’ve got. That’s something to hold on to. There may not be anyone else. That gives them the sense they’re not really alone.”

Tan said that’s the key. To let the kids know they aren’t all on their own, and that there is a road for them that runs above the despair on the streets.

“Even if they live in this city, they don’t have to grow up in all of that,” Tan said. “They learn they can have a different life.”

To 19-year-old Quanasia Whitehead, the Kids Alley life is all she knows.

“It means a lot to me,” said Whitehead, a Learning Center staff assistant and freshmen at Camden County College studying biotechnology and forensic science. She’s been a Kids Alley kid since she was a small child, and served as an intern while she was in high school.

“I grew up with it, it’s like a second home to me,” she said.

Often she said, the kids — little girls, especially — come to her with problems or questions. They want advice and comfort.

“I tell them, ‘Stick with God,’” Whitehead said.

Tan said Whitehead, with her aspirations of being a crime scene investigator, is exactly the kind of example the kids, brimming with intelligence and potential, need to see.

“In each of these the children is a dream, a talent, a skill,” Tan said. “They’re just looking for someone to say, ‘I’m here for you, and I believe in you.’”

For Angelina, that’s her dream of healing animals. For 11-year-old Laniya Lilliston, that means one day teaching children about the science labs she loves so much. For 10-years-old Jacqueline Ramos, that means being a doctor.

“I like the tutors, they’re nice and make sure I do my homework,” Jacqueline explained. “And when I bring it to school, I get a 100 percent.”